1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a device and a method for monitoring of solid-state detectors formed with amorphous semiconductor materials.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Solid-state detectors (which are subsequently also designated as flat panel detectors or image detectors) can be fashioned as flat x-ray detectors. The solid-state detectors are used in, among other things, mammography or radiology. Digital x-ray images can be measured at the solid-state detectors after the incidence of high-energy radiation thereon. In the solid-state detectors considered herein the principle of direct conversion can be used for x-ray image generation. In this principle charges are generated by high-energy radiation striking the amorphous semiconductor material. The charges generated in the amorphous semiconductor material are then discharged by means of a readout electronic formed with a thin film transistor (TFT) semiconductor technique and evaluated in downstream electronic processing units. The employed amorphous semiconductor material (which can be, for example, amorphous selenium a-Se) can tend toward crystallization upon exceeding or dropping below an operating or environment temperature. Upon such crystallization, the state of the amorphous selenium irreversibly changes to a crystalline state. This has the consequence that the image quality of the flat panel detector or image detector is reduced.